It’s Microsoft Windows 10’s End-of-Life (EoL) this October (2025). A lot of people with older machines will be impacted by this as their machines will not be able to run Windows 11, even with hardware upgrades.
Over the years I’ve managed to keep my older machines running for as long as possible with various upgrades and modifications. The best upgrade for your money and the return on investment is moving from a disk-based hard drive (HDD) to a solid state drive (SSD). I have laptops that are 15 years old that are running Windows 10 just fine but fail the Windows 11 compatibility check.
So what are the options for those of us that can’t afford a new computer?
First, backup your computer. I mean, you are already doing this anyway right? This will ensure that you have access to your data should anything happen to your PC going forwards. Backup both the data and take an image of the drive and store two copies in separate safe locations.
Once your data is backed-up, replace the OS with Linux. There are many flavours available. Go peruse distrowatch to see which one best suits you. If you are still unsure then Ubuntu is popular among those new to Linux.
Once you are up and running you can port your data across. There are Linux applications that are alternatives to Windows applications that can still read your files. Instead of Office you can run LibreOffice for example. There are many open source applications that should be able to help.
If you really need to run Windows and your laptop is powerful enough you can run something like Virtualbox and run your Windows 10 in a virtual machine. Or you can containerise your applications and run them in something like Docker. Or look at WINE, the linux Windows emulator.
Just because Microsoft is no longer supporting Windows 10 does not mean that you have to pay for a new machine to use Windows 11. You have options.
Got any other suggestions? Let me know.